The ‘Luck Mix’ top

I was a little unsure about this theme. While I quite like patchwork and quilting, the idea of walking around wearing a doona does not appeal (although in this weather…). I decided to be game and had a good sort through my patterns and fabrics before deciding it was all hopeless and it would just simply not happen.

I happened to spot a simple little top in an old Burda magazine and had another rummage through my fabrics and came up with two pieces of fabric. Piece one was leftovers from my ‘MadethatLook’ dress and Piece two was a small L-shaped piece of fabric that I had picked up for a dollar at the op shop without realising that there wasn’t as much there as I would have hoped.

The pieces were of a similar fabric weight and feel and it took a while to convince myself that they would work together. The pattern went together very well. I left off the lower back darts and left out the zip completely. This meant that the neck hole was just big enough to get over my head but when I added the neck facings I found that I was likely to rip my ears off at some point when removing the top.

This was fixed by a quick slice straight down the centre of the back. I used a cute chequered bias tape to cover this and used it on the sleeves too. I dug through my stash looking for a black button but found instead a white button with a metal edge which looked perfect. I then spent a lifetime sewing the loop for the button. Ok it probably didn’t help that I was surfing the net at the time, but that fiddly little job seemed to take forever.

French seams and a rolled hem seem to be my speciality at present. It is a fairly subtle print combination but the more I try it on, the more I feel it looks right. It was lucky to have some leftover fabric. It was lucky to have bought the scrap. And it was lucky to find a simple pattern in which they both worked well. If I knew how to spell serendipidity, I’d use that word but I’m not sure so I’ll just call it my Lucky Mix.

16 Comments

I know what you mean re: thread loops. One of the first things I ever sewed needed a thread loop on the back like yours, and I must have unripped that things 5 times! It still isn’t perfect, but I just got sick of doing it.

Great easy wear top Jen. It’s not uncommon that I discover I’ve bought a tiny scrap when I get home from the op shop too. Hate how some of them bundle them up in tape so you can’t really check it out. Great idea on the back split with button. I’m so hopeless at handwork.. I’d have made a self fabric rouleaux loop just to avoid it. haha.

I rarely go out and buy fabric and pattern at the same time. I just collect each independently and hope that I’ll find a match. Some work and some don’t but I do like it when you find out you have greater creativity than you thought.

About the Sew Weekly

The Sew Weekly began as Mena Trott's attempt to document the process of sewing all of her own clothes in 2010. In 2011, four other contributors (Debi Fry, Adey Lim, Veronica Darling & Sarah Gabbart) joined her and for 52 weeks, they sewed based on a particular weekly theme. In 2012, The Sew Weekly became a much larger group blog with over 130 contributors sewing along each week.